FRENCH PATTERNS in WESTERN CANADIAN LANDSCAPES >Ron

CONFERENCE I LECTURE FRENCH PATTERNS IN WESTERN CANADIAN LANDSCAPES RON WILLIAMS is a professor' at the Ecole >RoN WILLIAMS d'ar·chitectur·e de paysage of the University of Montr·eal, of which he was the dir'ector' for two mandates. Through his office Williams, Asselin, Ackaoui et associes [WAA), he has realized many well-known landscape ar'chitecture and urban any scholars have explored the design pmjects. A Fellow of CSI_A and RAIC, Mrich variety of settlement patterns he is currently writing a book on the history of brought to the Canadian Prairies by Euro pean immigrants in the late nineteenth landscape architecture in Canada. and early twentieth centuries, including such unique features as the Mennonite "street village" and Ukrainian church and cemetery compositions. But the first wave of physical impressions on the land in the Canadian West, following those implanted everywhere by the First Nations, was essentially French, transplanted from New France. Just as Virginia provided the pattern for Texas, according to American landscape scholar J. B. Jackson, or New England for the American Middle West, Quebec traditions established a first tem plate for the towns and rural areas of the western provinces of Canada. THE QUEBEC TRADITION To trace that influence, let us first recall some of the familiar agricultural and com munity patterns of Quebec, after which we will explore some of the ways in which those patterns influenced the early land scape development of the West. Most obvious is the relation between navigable rivers and agricultural patterns in New France. During the first two centu ries after its establishment, travel in New France relied on its excellent network of major waterways, principally the St. Law rence and its great tributaries, including the Richelieu, the Chaudiere, the Saint Maurice, and the Ottawa, and their many branches. Farms and villages were laid out along that ready-made transportation system. The French authorities distributed large blocks of land along the rivers to FIG. 1. OTTAWA RIVER AND LO NG- LOT FARM S. AIR VIEW I RON WILLI AMS JSSAC I JSEAC 31 > N•· 1 > 2006 > 55-64 55 RoN WILLIAMS > CONFERENCE I LECTURE a third approach is used: the church- like every building in town- faces straight out onto the Saint-Maurice River, the essential ligne de force of the whole region . In addition to its relationship to the larger landscape, the church is usually carefully related to smaller man-made landscapes as well. Those include the churchyard FIG. 4. GRANDE-PILES, CEMETERY. IRON WILLIAMS and especially the cemetery, which, in Quebec's vernacular tradition, is formal and symmetrical, enclosed by symbolic evergreen trees. Gravestones are orga nized in rows perpendicular to a central axis dominated by the cross, which rises physically and metaphorically above all.. _ even death. The church and cemetery are usually components of a larger composi tion: an intricate complex of buildings and enclosed spaces, which is either the noyau FIG. 3. GRANDE-PILE S, TOWN AND CHURCH, ST. MAURICE RI VER, FIG. 5. JARDIN DES SULPI CIENS, MONTREAL. IPETER JACOBS villageois of a town or a self-contained QUEBEC. IRON WILLIAMS institution such as a hospital, college, or convent. The private gardens of such institutions are often beautiful and wel seigneurs, who recruited colonists or cen drier flat land for grains, rough pasture coming places- and surprisingly practi sitaires, and assigned to each of them a and woodlot in less fertile, stony soils at cal. Some, like those of the monastere long, linear farm laid out perpendicular to higher elevations. des Ursulines in Quebec City, may be the waterway, the sole means of access . among the oldest gardens of their tradi As the system became successful, the first This line of settlement becomes a village tion in the world. All include spaces that row of farms along the rivers filled up; a almost imperceptibly, through a densifi are sacred in character, like the intimate second and subsequent rows were estab cation of the rang, usually at its intersec corner reserved for the Virgin Mary in lished behind it along roads called rangs. tion with a mantee. The parish church, convent gardE .s, and the more impos There could be many of these roughly the most striking building in each village ing ca/vaire statue of Jesus. But exten parallel rangs, connected at intervals by in terms of both size and location, is often sive areas have always been reserved for perpendicular roads called montees. Seen located near this intersection and, at the gardening of vegetables and fruit trees from a distance, the rang is a long thin same time, remarkably sited with respect to put food on the table (many such line of farmhouses, barns, and outbuild to the larger natural landscape. A clas institutions were semi-autonomous) and ings-almost a continuous settlement. An sic approach is the hilltop site, as at St of flowers for the altar or for pure enjoy advantage of this system is the proximity Jean-de-Matha in the Lanaudiere region, ment. A third role played by those spaces of farmsteads, which permits people to where the church is located at the high is to provide recreation and escape for live fairly close to their neighbours and est point in the village. Another arche the religieux or religieuses, and their stu to share community and mutual sup type sites the church directly on the axis dents or patients. Thus the gardens could port. Another advantage, particularly of a major road, as at Charlesbourg just easily include a volleyball court, a garden evident in sites of irregular topography north of Quebec City, where the church swing, or a little " English cottage" used like those of the ile d'Orleans or Beauce, of Saint-Charles-Borromee terminates as a temporary retreat, as at the H6tei is that each farm enjoys a variety of soil the Trait Carre, or square-pattern main Dieu in Quebec City. What these gardens types and growing conditions-fertile road, at the centre of that historic town. are not are museums-they have changed bottomland for row crops, higher and In the Mauricie region at Grandes-Piles, constantly over the centuries to respond 56 JSSAC I JSEAC 31 > N" I > 2006 R ON WILLIAMS > CONFERENCE I LECTURE to new conditions, yet have always main- The view back to the water focuses on tained an inherent aesthetic coherence. a silhouetted statue of Jesus (a common sequence, seen at Pointe-Claire and many The limits of the village were often clearly other waterside locations). A little further defined, in the eighteenth century, by along are the intimate gardens of college chapel/es de procession, tiny chapels at Sainte-Anne; and throughout, dozens of the edge of town that were the object examples of excellent craftsmanship in of a kind of pilgrimage on Corpus Christi stone, glass, and wrought iron. day-the Fete-Dieu celebrated each June-when the entire congregation THE FUR TRADE would parade from the parish church out to the little chapel where a special By a strange coincidence, that building service was held. Parish boundaries were complex is the hinge between New France also defined, by wayside crosses or croix and the West. Just across a narrow water- de chemin. Some of these crosses can still way from the college of the Sisters of be seen all over Quebec, not necessarily Sainte-Anne stands the main warehouse FIG. 6. CROIX DE CHE MIN, THE MAURICIE REGION, QUEBEC. IR ON WILLIAMS "official," but often put up by individuals of the Northwest Fur Trading Company, or groups. A great many remain in par- from which annual waves of giant canoes ticular regions, such as the Mauricie, and took goods up Lake Saint-Louis, through some survive in dense urban landscapes, the Great Lakes and to the West, and quiet reminders of a vanished rural past. came back with furs. The human presence with its symbols is also extended out into the broader natural It was the fur trade that opened Western landscape through chemins de Ia croix as Canada-what was then Rupert's Land, at Saint-Eiie-de-Caxton or at the famous later the Northwest Territories-to influ- Saint Joseph's Oratory in Montreal, where ence and settlement from Eastern Canada. FIG. 7. SAINT-ELIE-DE·CAXTON, QUEBEC. a crooked and tortuous path leads gradu- Trading for furs with native peoples was VIEW FROM CALVA/RE.I•oNwlluAMs ally up the mountain, passing the stations as old as the first European incursions into of the cross, finally arriving at the summit, the St . Lawrence valley. In the sixteenth where a powerful ca/vaire dominates the century, before the foundation of Port scene. The reverse view, from mountain Royal or Quebec City, French and Basque top to surrounding countryside, is the final sailors maintained seasonal trading posts majestic experience of what has been a on the lower river, bartering for furs with demanding pilgrimage. the lnnu or Montagnais. As New France was settled and furs were exhausted in One of the remarkable ensembles of reli- nearby areas, the frontier of the fur trade FIG. 8. SAINTS-ANGES-GARDIENS CHURCH AND gious and civic buildings and spaces typi- moved west to Three Rivers and Montreal, SAINTE-ANNE, LACHINE, QUEBEC. VIEW ACROSS cal of those described above is found at then via the Great Lakes to Detroit, the THE WATER . I RON WILLIAMS Lachine, Quebec, where the Saints-Anges- strategic hinge that provided access to the Gardiens church and college Sainte-Anne whole inland empire of the Mississippi, and create a powerful composition near the to Huronia, the "land between the lakes." western entrance to the Lachine Canal.

Load more